Staying Awake: Finding Your Way as a Counselor

by Cynthia L. Marcolina, LPC

I believe that we can be born more than once in our lives. I believe that I have three birthdays: my official birthday, the second birthday when I met my mentor, and a third birthday in my early 40's. In between my birthdays, I've done some 'sleepwalking.' What I mean is that there were times in my life when I was not feeling close or connected to myself or other people. I felt asleep. Becoming a client in counseling was the first experience of rebirth, and the second experience was a painful liaison in my 40's.

Even after these significant events in my life, the effects did not always become sustained. This isn't at all surprising, considering that is what happens with clients. I remember how excited and anxious I was when I first entered counseling and also that liaison. They weren't like any other experiences I had before. Both made me feel unconditionally accepted and truly appreciated for who I was, and both gave me permission to explore the uncharted waters of my soul. It was liberating.

So when I am invited to talk about myself, it's appealing and powerful. But after awhile, I usually retreat (or is it rest?) again from others and myself. I guess this could be those fits and starts on the road to discovery, growth or change. Perhaps it's a lack of total readiness or a way to protect myself because, underneath it all, I'm vulnerable to rejection.

Emotionally, I continue to ebb and flow like the ocean tides or wax and wane like the moon. I come in close and then back off as I go through my phases of development or as a work in progress. I can either vacillate between playing it safe and taking risks, between complicating my life and simplifying my life, and between being other-oriented and self-absorbed. I even oscillate between writing verse and prose!

Even as I write this, I'm struck by how hard it is for me to stay with myself or keep balance in my life, for there are times I find myself just going through the motions of living. I get up and go back to bed, with my enthusiasm and creativity hibernating now and then. Please don't misunderstand me - this is not to say that I'm not alert during my sessions or that I'm not being mindful of what I do. But, rather, I'm just not as aware of my feelings as acutely as at other times.

For so many years, I have been busy making my career a priority and focusing on accumulating various job experiences that I knew would make my work history impressive. I have been employed at psychiatric hospitals, a medical surgical hospital, day treatment facilities, community nonprofit facilities and private practices. In the meantime, I moved, traveled, lost and gained the same 25 pounds several times and had minor surgery. When I was 42, I finally got the relief from some pain that I was having, and it improved my energy level. At times, because of all this, I felt like I was going through puberty again and was about to burst out of my skin! It's been disconcerting not understanding exactly what is happening to me physically and spiritually and feeling compelled to express it at the same time.

Specifically, when I was 43 and starting 'the change,' I worked nights and Saturdays at a community mental health agency. In the span of a few years, I gradually became lonely and estranged from my husband. It was so subtle and cumulative that I didn't notice it until, unwittingly, one holiday season when I developed a flirtatious relationship with a colleague. We soon became close confidants; it was romantic but remained platonic. It satisfied unfulfilled wishes and desires yet caused me such anguish. I cried more than I had in my whole life. It touched my old 'soft spot' or 'heart of sadness' in a way that nothing else had in a long time. I finally gave myself the permission I needed to let all of my stored-up tears out from all the other hurts and disappointments I had repressed in my life. I told everyone that my crying spells were caused by hormonal changes taking place in my body, but it was really a 'midlife crisis' that I was having or a crisis of conscience.

At first, I tried coping by listening to music, taking long walks and re-entering counseling as a client. I was torn between my love for my husband and my longing for my colleague. Being confused is the most painful experience for me; whether it's the uncertainty of it or feeling like I'm totally out of control, I don't know for sure. I wanted desperately to alleviate my suffering and transform my grief somehow into something positive so I could concentrate on my work. It was extremely challenging for me to manage my own inner turmoil and still see clients at the same time. However, I was experiencing and connecting with my emotions in a way that I hadn't before. I certainly would not have chosen this experience to wake me up or recommend to anyone that they go looking for this, but it did ultimately help me feel more alive and reborn.

This new pain was intense and forced me to face myself again and to risk creating. I've realized throughout the years that I usually don't pay attention to my pain until it's loud and I can't ignore it anymore. I've also noticed that one of the first things that I do when I 'wake up' is take a stab at writing poetry.

Whether it's because I'm older now or I have more life experience, I finally have the courage and the confidence to really risk being creative and to try better ways of identifying and communicating my inner turmoil. Sometimes writing is an excruciating or nauseating process for me because it's very hard for me to find the exact words to accurately convey what I want to say.

For example, I wrote that last sentence about 10 different ways! Writing doesn't come easy to me because I didn't study it, for one thing, and because I don't do it every day. Although for some reason I find it less painstaking to write poetry or technical papers.

I just realized something. The less I say in counseling and the fewer words I write, the better. The more I try to elaborate, the more I trip over my words like the proverbial centipede which trips over its feet when it tries too hard to concentrate on how to walk! It takes less effort to be vague than to be precise.

Then there are those times I cherish writing because I become so engrossed that I lose my self-consciousness, and there's no distinction anymore between where I begin and end, or between me and the keyboard and the computer. It makes me feel reborn with my surrounding and connected to the world. I think that I value being in counseling and doing counseling because it's another way to bridge separateness (or estrangement?) for other people and me.

I think that my clients come to counseling, and I go to counseling, when we can no longer ignore our feelings and problems and our pain can become a catalyst. I learned that pain, if harnessed creatively, could become an inspiration, a muse. One such time for me was going into counseling and another was being at a crossroads in my marriage. For my clients, it has been illnesses, deaths, accidents, divorces and births or some other major change in their lives.

The task for me then is to take my rebirths and find a way to stay awake and use them as a counselor. I think that I can accomplish this by integrating my pain into my life and incorporating it into my work and then teaching clients to 'reframe' their painful experiences, too. For example, I helped one client to view his brain tumor, and the surgery to remove it, as his personal '9/11' and 'rebirth.' Now he says that his life is divided into two parts: before the tumor (or 'BT time') and after the tumor ('AT time'). Counseling helped him decide that the true purpose of the tumor was to wake him up. It certainly shook him up. A man once afraid that he had no future and would not see his daughter grow up is now anticipating the birth of his second child.

My goal is to continue learning and growing by harnessing and transforming my pain from each 'rebirth' and to stay awake a little longer each time and use it to be the most effective counselor I can.

Cynthia L. Marcolina, LPC

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Cynthia Marcolina's highest credential is a Masters degree in counseling from Arcadia in Glenside, Pennsylvania and sheI holds a license in the same state. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor, (Therapist License Verification). She has been doing counseling for over 15 years. She has worked with children, adolescents, adults, and geriatric clients individually, as a couple, or as a family. She also has done group therapy and psychodrama. She is a professional member of The American Counseling Association. She keeps current in my field by doing continuing education (home study, seminars, conferences) and by reading periodicals and books on counseling). She uses an integrative approach combining techniques from the Cognitive-Behavioral, Humanistic, and Existential theories.